Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Category Archives: quotes
Monthly Quotations for September
And so we arrive at this month’s collection of recently encountered quotes …
Imagine how noisy centipedes would be if they wore tiny flip flops.
[unknown]
You should not be afraid of someone who has a library and reads many books; you should fear someone who has only one book; and he considers it sacred, but he has never read it.
[Friedrich Nietzsche]
Sometimes I like to run naked in the moonlight and the wind, on a little trail behind our house, when the honeysuckle blooms. It’s a feeling of freedom, so close to God and nature.
[Dolly Parton]
Young wenches … gett upon a Table-board, and then gather-up their knees & their coates with their hands as high as they can, and then they wabble to and fro with their Buttocks as if they were kneading of Dowgh with their Arses.
[John Aubrey (1626-1697)]
In the old ignorant times before woomen were Readers ye history was handed downe from mother to daughter, &c.
[John Aubrey (1626-1697)]
The most pleasant of all outward pastimes is … to make pretty progress, a merry journey now and then with some good companions, to visit friends, see Cities, Castles, Towns, to see the pleasant fields, the crystal fountains, and take the gentle air amongst the mountains.
[Robert Burton; The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)]
There are only two options: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are frightening.
[Carl Sagan]
This Month’s Poem
Hiawatha’s Photographing (opening)
Lewis Carroll
From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing;
But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid.
Find this poem online at My Poetic Side
This Month’s Quote
The universe is a circle whose circumference is nowhere
and whose centre is everywhere.
Paraphrase of Blaise Pascal
Monthly Quotes for August
Once more unto this month’s collection of quotes.
Nudity is only taboo because we make it so. Let’s normalise it and break free from societal norms.
[unknown]
The only time of learning is from age nine to sixteen; afterwards, Cupid begins to tyrannise, jealousies, marriage and worldly cares intertwine with studies. It is a mistake to keep boys at their books at an age more proper for matrimony, when their minds chiefly run on propagating their race. Nature will be nature at 18+. At this age their information is like writing on greasy parchment: it will not stick or leave an imprint. Trying to educate boys over eighteen is like painting anew on an old picture: the colours will not be imbibed.
[John Aubrey, quoted un Ruth Scurr, John Aubrey: My Own Life]
I’m at that age where my mind still thinks I’m 29, my humour suggests I’m 12, while my body mostly keeps asking if I’m sure I’m not dead yet.
[unknown]
Since Einstein the future of time has become even more precarious.
[Prof. Janna Levin]
There is no objective time – past, present and future are all a matter of your own perspective.
[Dr Kate Mack]
Calories (noun): Tiny creatures that inhabit your closet and sew your clothes a little bit tighter every night.
[unknown]
I feel like a lot of my problems would be solved if I had a dragon.
[unknown]
The truth has no defence against a fool determined to believe a lie.
[Mark Twain]
Don’t call it getting undressed. Call it returning to factory settings.
[unknown]
Every time you open a book and read, a tree smiles, knowing there’s life after death.
[unknown]
Though many desire these treasures, none enter but he who knows the key and how to use it.
[Anthony Powell; Temporary Kings]
Reason is given to all men, but all men do not know how to use it. Liberty is offered to each one of us, but few learn to be free. Such gifts are, in any case, a right to be earned, not a privilege for the shiftless.
[Anthony Powell; The Kindly Ones]
We’re trained in obedience and rule-following from a very young age. We need equivalent practice in breaking rules, in recognizing when a rule or law is unjust and needs to be broken, and in acting in accord with that recognition. We need this all the time, but damn if we don’t need it especially now. One day, possibly soon, we will be called on to break a big law in the name of justice and rationality. Be ready.
[Mandy Brown]
There are no new ideas, just new ways of giving those ideas we cherish breath and power in our own living.
[Audre Lorde]
This Month’s Poem
Macavity: the Mystery Cat (extract)
TS Elliot
Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw –
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there!
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air –
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!
[…]
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
For he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square –
But when a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there!
Find this poem online at Gutenberg Project
This Month’s Quote
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it.
Jef Mallett
Monthly Collected Quotes
And so it came to pass that we reached the appointed date for the delivery of this month’s (fairly short) collection of quotes.
I don’t know how to save the world. I don’t have the answer. I hold no secret knowledge, as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth’s inhabitants, none of us will survive – nor will we deserve to.
[Leonard Peltier]
Our world is not divided by race, colour, gender or religion. Our world is divided into wise people and fools. And fools divide themselves by race, colour, gender or religion.
[Nelson Mandela]
The natural sole purpose of beauty is to admire it.
[John Ruskin]
Having a calm and compassionate mind enables us to use our natural intelligence more effectively.
[Dalai Lama]
It’s absurd that common sense has become so uncommon.
Sleep at night.
Eat real foods (enough to offset your energy needs).
Don’t starve yourself.
Move your body, sometimes hard.
Don’t drink too much.
Don’t smoke or vape.
Connect with other people, in person.
Spend time outdoors.
[Brad Stulberg]
Personally I have never been to a lap dancing club and have no intention of going, but it annoys me intensely that Councils seem to see it as their divine right to stick their noses into such things.
If there are men who are silly enough to want to waste all their money in such places and women who are happy to earn quite substantial money by jiggling their lady bits at a bunch of drunken half-wits, then where is the harm?
I know, objectifies women blah, blah, blah, promotes an unhealthy view of women amongst men blah, blah, blah, but that’s just nonsense.
Our entire society objectifies women, so it’s a bit hard to just pick on these clubs, and these chaps have probably always had an emotionally stunted outlook, and the clubs are unlikely to change that much.
[Rudi Gunn; http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/apr/21/lap-dancing-clubs-human-rights]
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of hundreds of others, in seeing the hundreds of universes that each of them sees.
[Marcel Proust]
This Month’s Poem
Ariel’s Song From The Tempest (Act 5, Scene 1)
William Shakespeare
Where the bee sucks there suck I:
In a cowslips bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry,
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
Find this poem online at Shakespeare Network
This Month’s Quote
Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately
be explained by incompetence.
Napoleon Bonaparte